BIG NEWS: ObamaCare Employer Mandate Pushed Back To 2015

Businesses won’t be penalized next year if they don’t provide workers health insurance after the Obama administration decided to delay a key requirement under its health-care law, two administration officials said.

The decision will come in regulatory guidance to be issued later this week. It addresses vehement complaints from employer groups about the administrative burden of reporting requirements, though it may also affect coverage provided to some workers.

The two officials, who asked not to be identified to discuss the move ahead of its announcement, said the administration decided to wait until 2015 before enforcing the employer mandate in order to simplify reporting requirements and give businesses more time to adapt their health-care coverage.

What happens now, without a law requiring businesses to provide insurance to full-time workers as the cost of coverage — and the cost of complying with other new O-Care regulations — rises? No one knows. We had to pass the bill to see what’s in it, and now we’ll have to implement the bill without an employer mandate to see what it looks like in practice.

The nation’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group Inc., is leaving California’s individual health insurance market, the second major company to exit in advance of major changes under the Affordable Care Act.

UnitedHealth said it had notified state regulators that it would leave the state’s individual market at year-end and force about 8,000 customers to find new coverage. Last month, Aetna Inc., the nation’s third-largest health insurer, made a similar move affecting about 50,000 existing policyholders.

Business owners and job creators have been saying ObamaCare would be a disaster from day one. This breaking news is an inadvertent acknowledgement of that fact.